Antonio Banderas and Lou Diamond Philips go underground in The 33’

Ed SymkusMore Content Now

Wednesday

Nov 4, 2015 at 11:33 AMNov 4, 2015 at 11:33 AM

It wasn’t enough for the true story of 33 Chilean miners trapped a half mile underground for more than two months to have a happy ending. On top of that, Hollywood managed to put together a terrific ensemble of actors to tell the story in “The 33,” and, under the direction of Patricia Riggen, make it bristle with thoughts of death and hopes of life. Leading the cast are Lou Diamond Phillips as Luis “Don Lucho” Urzua, the shift foreman, and Antonio Banderas as Mario Sepúlveda, who becomes the group’s leader when, after the accident, Urzua can’t handle the task. Phillips and Banderas spoke about their roles last week in New York.

Q: Could you both talk about meeting the real miners or just share your thoughts on what you believe they went through?

Phillips: I was the only person in the entire cast and crew that doesn’t speak Spanish, so poor Patricia had to repeat things [to me in English]. “Oh, right, Lou; you stand over here. Just follow the others.” (laughs). I did speak with Luis Urzua through a translator, and found out a few things about his family and about his devout Catholic faith. But the thing that I received most from him, by just spending time and watching him, was how he carried himself, how he comported himself. This man spent his entire life in a mine, starting as a teenager just moving rocks. This was his life and passion and pride. So you can understand how devastated he was, how responsible and guilty he felt when the collapse happened. I could see his quiet dignity, and his centeredness, and the fact that he is relatively shy. To be able to get those personality traits from him, and that body language and the way he moves through the world, was very informative for me.

Banderas: One of the things that they all say to you is that we are not heroes. And that is very important in the movie. What we see are human beings that make mistakes, eventually. There’s a moment of Don Lucho’s weakness at the beginning of the collapse and, in a way, the character of Mario takes over. But there are moments of weakness for Mario, too. When the news comes in from the outside world, and he starts reading about the drama they were living, he sees this as an opportunity. And it’s logical [for him] to think about that. These are miners that have been working very hard, for many years, to just give some dignity to their families, their lives, and they could just take the wrong step sometimes. But we can see in the movie that he had the greatness to apologize, and to be reinserted in the group. What I learned from him that is not reflected in the movie – because there was no time to tell it all – is that he was a survivor from very early stages of his life. He suffered as a kid and as a teenager; he had to learn how to survive on a tough path, in a rough way. And it was incredible that life gave him an opportunity to use those skills in order for him to find some order, some discipline in [the mine], that ultimately would save all of their lives.

Q: You all spent a lot of time underground making the film. What were the toughest physical demands?

Banderas: More than the fact that we had to lose a lot of weight, for me the most physically demanding part was being in one of the mines [where we shot in Colombia]. It was a very toxic mine, with a lot of methane gas that leaves a kind of metallic feeling in your mouth for days. We were also operating heavy trucks and machinery that produced a lot of carbon monoxide that we were breathing. And dirt and rocks were falling on top of our heads.

Phillips: You had to wear helmets every day, and it was 14 hours a day, six days a week. A lot is made in the film about the fact that it was a hundred degrees down there. It was NOT a hundred degrees down there. We shot this from November to January, the crew was wearing winter jackets, and we had to get stripped down, grimed up, and sprayed to look like we’re sweating. So you wait for the goose pimples to go down, and then you can roll. This was our experience day in and day out. Also, you had to walk 20 minutes for the bathroom.

Q: Lou, is it true that you became sort of the de facto caterer?

Phillips: A few of the guys would go shopping with me on our day off. I started cooking just for the cast, because we were on special diets. I felt like Bubba Blue from “Forrest Gump.” We had plantains every day: mashed plantains, fried plantains, boiled plantains, sautéed plantains, plantain sandwiches, plantain chips. But because I love to cook, I took it upon myself to cook every Sunday. It started with just the cast, then the director and the camera department and the producers, and by the end of it I was cooking for about 40 people on any given Sunday.

Ed Symkus covers movies for More Content Now

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